Migrating VM's to new datastore

[sayho]

We are about to outgrow one of our datastores, and are in the process of planning to move about 40 VM's to a new datastore. We were thinking of using Veeam migration to accomplish this (we don't have vStorage motion). Would this be the recommended way to go in veeam to keep downtime to a minimum? When using quick migrate in veeam, we noticed that after migration, the MAC address of the VM had changed. Is there a way for a migrated VM to keep it's MAC address (and other hardware settings for that matter)?

Thanks in advance!

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello sayho,

Yes, migration job is the best choice if you want to perform massive VMs migration. As to the MAC address change issue, could you please tell me what type of network adapter is configured for your VMs?

Thank you.

[sayho]

Hi Vitally,

All our VM's use a vNetwork standard switch, this VM's adaptor type is aVMXNET 3. FYI, the VM we are using for the testing of the migration is a RHEL 6 VM.

Thanks again.

[Vitaliy S.]

Try changing the MAC address configuration to Manual instead of Automatic, in this case MAC address should not be changed. Let me know if that helps.

[sayho]

Hi Vitally,

Is there any way for the MAC address to remain the same after migration without having to change the MAC address to manual? I'm sure you're aware that the manual setting would not let us keep the same mac address's on our VM's that were allocated via automatic.

Thoughts?

[Vitaliy S.]

Looks like you're not alone with this trouble: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1759869#1759869

Btw, have you tried running replication job?

[sayho]

I did just try a replication job, and the MAC address stayed the same. What is different about replication and migration that migration prompts a MAC address change?

[Vitaliy S.]

I believe in replication jobs there is a manual enforcement to keep MAC address in-place, but need to double-check that with our dev team.

[sayho]

Thanks Vitally. Is there a setting where we can also enforce MAC address to remain the same in migration?

[Vitaliy S.]

I'm afraid this setting is not configurable for migration jobs, so feel free to use replication jobs instead.

[bmeyer99]

I am replicating a VM with 6.1 and the MAC address is getting changed. There is no user listed in the Event of the MAC address change. I noticed this because my Monitor alarm for MAC address conflict was getting resolved automatically. It happens at the exact same time that the UUID changes from () to (UUID NUMBER). There is a task that runs under my Veeam user account to "Reconfigure virtual machine" two seconds before the UUID and MAC address changes. And is 5 seconds after the alarm for the MAC and UUID conflicts. This is right after the replication job creates the replica VM.
So my question is whether vSphere is making the MAC address change or is it Veeam making the MAC address change? If Veeam is making the change then this needs to be stopped (or a setting) to force the MAC address to stay as there are still a lot of poorly programmed software out there that licenses based on the MAC address of the NIC.

[Gostev]

Nobody "changes" MAC address per say, neither vSphere nor Veeam. What happens is Veeam creates the new VM on target, and this VM gets assigned new MAC address by vSphere automatically.

[bmeyer99]

Nobody "changes" MAC address per say, neither vSphere nor Veeam. What happens is Veeam creates the new VM on target, and this VM gets assigned new MAC address by vSphere automatically.

I am not saying you're wrong, but if that is the case how are these tasks explained?

Replication MAC Changes.PNG (95.73 KiB) Viewed 7437 times

[Gostev]

Just as I've said, this is vSphere setting new MAC addresses on new VM's adaptors automatically.

[bmeyer99]

I did just try a replication job, and the MAC address stayed the same. What is different about replication and migration that migration prompts a MAC address change?

their replication kept the same MAC address, and Vitaliy says there is a manual process to keep the same MAC address. Am I missing something?

[Gostev]

Under normal circumstances, replication should not preserve MAC address either. This was big research project for us back in v6 development time to add MAC address preservation feature to replication, it was implemented and even made it as far as the What's New draft, but then removed from there last minute because we found it does not work reliably due to some vSphere peculiarities. Don't remember all the details by now, but it had to deal with different ranges of manually assigned and auto-assigned MAC addresses. So, we could not take auto-assigned MAC, and set it as manually assigned MAC to replica VM reliably (something like this).

[bmeyer99]

That makes sense, I know the limitation of assigning an auto-assigned MAC address to a newly created VM is troublesome, I had to try and do it a couple years back due to some programs that licensed based on MAC address. Thanks for the explanation.

[Andreas Neufert]

Hi,

we facing the same problem in a huge 6.1 project.

Linux VMs getting a new MAC Address in virual LAB and loosing therefore their IP Addresses.
The VM was a new reated and new installed VM.

EnablePreseveMAC Registry Key are implemented. No change.

Any idea?

[Cokovic]

Hi,

we facing the same problem in a huge 6.1 project.

Linux VMs getting a new MAC Address in virual LAB and loosing therefore their IP Addresses.
The VM was a new reated and new installed VM.

EnablePreseveMAC Registry Key are implemented. No change.

Any idea?

This is because of MAC address binding in todays linux distros.

Maybe the solutions discussed here, here and here are a good way to go Andy.

[Andreas Neufert]

Hi Haris,

perfect thank you.

[m.novelli]

I had this issue today: moving some VM between different vSphere Infrastructures with Quick Migration one VM didn't work because the onboard software checked the MAC address and raised a licensing error.

Marco

[Vitaliy S.]

Do you mean vCenter Server or some application inside the VM? MAC address conflict should prevent VMs from migration...

[m.novelli]

Do you mean vCenter Server or some application inside the VM? MAC address conflict should prevent VMs from migration...

Application inside VM, I didn't get a MAC address conflict but simply a MAC address change, and the onboard software was licensed based on MAC address (BTW we didn't know about that license check of this particular software)

Cheers

Marco

[Vitaliy S.]

Got it! In situations like that it might make sense to use static MAC addresses, at least I've seen that it did the trick for someone.